perlunicode - Unicode support in Perl
Unicode support is an extensive requirement. While Perl does not
implement the Unicode standard or the accompanying technical reports
from cover to cover, Perl does support many Unicode features.
=item Input and Output Layers
Perl knows when a filehandle uses Perl's internal Unicode encodings
(UTF-8, or UTF-EBCDIC if in EBCDIC) if the filehandle is opened with
the ":utf8" layer. Other encodings can be converted to Perl's
encoding on input or from Perl's encoding on output by use of the
":encoding(...)" layer. See L<open>.
To indicate that Perl source itself is using a particular encoding,
=item Regular Expressions
The regular expression compiler produces polymorphic opcodes. That is,
the pattern adapts to the data and automatically switches to the Unicode
character scheme when presented with Unicode data--or instead uses
a traditional byte scheme when presented with byte data.
=item C<use utf8> still needed to enable UTF-8/UTF-EBCDIC in scripts
As a compatibility measure, the C<use utf8> pragma must be explicitly
included to enable recognition of UTF-8 in the Perl scripts themselves
(in string or regular expression literals, or in identifier names) on
ASCII-based machines or to recognize UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC-based
machines. B<These are the only times when an explicit C<use utf8>
You can also use the C<encoding> pragma to change the default encoding
of the data in your script; see L<encoding>.
=head2 Byte and Character Semantics
Beginning with version 5.6, Perl uses logically-wide characters to
represent strings internally.
In future, Perl-level operations will be expected to work with
characters rather than bytes.
However, as an interim compatibility measure, Perl aims to
provide a safe migration path from byte semantics to character
semantics for programs. For operations where Perl can unambiguously
decide that the input data are characters, Perl switches to
character semantics. For operations where this determination cannot
be made without additional information from the user, Perl decides in
favor of compatibility and chooses to use byte semantics.
This behavior preserves compatibility with earlier versions of Perl,
which allowed byte semantics in Perl operations only if
none of the program's inputs were marked as being as source of Unicode
character data. Such data may come from filehandles, from calls to
external programs, from information provided by the system (such as %ENV),
or from literals and constants in the source text.
On Windows platforms, if the C<-C> command line switch is used or the
${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS} global flag is set to C<1>, all system calls
will use the corresponding wide-character APIs. This feature is
available only on Windows to conform to the API standard already
established for that platform--and there are very few non-Windows
platforms that have Unicode-aware APIs.
The C<bytes> pragma will always, regardless of platform, force byte
semantics in a particular lexical scope. See L<bytes>.
The C<utf8> pragma is primarily a compatibility device that enables
recognition of UTF-(8|EBCDIC) in literals encountered by the parser.
Note that this pragma is only required while Perl defaults to byte
semantics; when character semantics become the default, this pragma
may become a no-op. See L<utf8>.
Unless explicitly stated, Perl operators use character semantics
for Unicode data and byte semantics for non-Unicode data.
The decision to use character semantics is made transparently. If
input data comes from a Unicode source--for example, if a character
encoding layer is added to a filehandle or a literal Unicode
string constant appears in a program--character semantics apply.
Otherwise, byte semantics are in effect. The C<bytes> pragma should
be used to force byte semantics on Unicode data.
If strings operating under byte semantics and strings with Unicode
character data are concatenated, the new string will be upgraded to
I<ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1)>, even if the old Unicode string used EBCDIC.
This translation is done without regard to the system's native 8-bit
encoding, so to change this for systems with non-Latin-1 and
non-EBCDIC native encodings use the C<encoding> pragma. See
Under character semantics, many operations that formerly operated on
bytes now operate on characters. A character in Perl is
logically just a number ranging from 0 to 2**31 or so. Larger
characters may encode into longer sequences of bytes internally, but
this internal detail is mostly hidden for Perl code.
See L<perluniintro> for more.
=head2 Effects of Character Semantics
Character semantics have the following effects:
Strings--including hash keys--and regular expression patterns may
contain characters that have an ordinal value larger than 255.
If you use a Unicode editor to edit your program, Unicode characters
may occur directly within the literal strings in one of the various
Unicode encodings (UTF-8, UTF-EBCDIC, UCS-2, etc.), but will be recognized
as such and converted to Perl's internal representation only if the
appropriate L<encoding> is specified.
Unicode characters can also be added to a string by using the
C<\x{...}> notation. The Unicode code for the desired character, in
hexadecimal, should be placed in the braces. For instance, a smiley
face is C<\x{263A}>. This encoding scheme only works for characters
with a code of 0x100 or above.
you can use the C<\N{...}> notation and put the official Unicode
character name within the braces, such as C<\N{WHITE SMILING FACE}>.
If an appropriate L<encoding> is specified, identifiers within the
Perl script may contain Unicode alphanumeric characters, including
ideographs. Perl does not currently attempt to canonicalize variable
Regular expressions match characters instead of bytes. "." matches
a character instead of a byte. The C<\C> pattern is provided to force
a match a single byte--a C<char> in C, hence C<\C>.
Character classes in regular expressions match characters instead of
bytes and match against the character properties specified in the
Unicode properties database. C<\w> can be used to match a Japanese
Named Unicode properties, scripts, and block ranges may be used like
character classes via the C<\p{}> "matches property" construct and
the C<\P{}> negation, "doesn't match property".
For instance, C<\p{Lu}> matches any character with the Unicode "Lu"
(Letter, uppercase) property, while C<\p{M}> matches any character
with an "M" (mark--accents and such) property. Brackets are not
required for single letter properties, so C<\p{M}> is equivalent to
C<\pM>. Many predefined properties are available, such as
C<\p{Mirrored}> and C<\p{Tibetan}>.
The official Unicode script and block names have spaces and dashes as
separators, but for convenience you can use dashes, spaces, or
underbars, and case is unimportant. It is recommended, however, that
for consistency you use the following naming: the official Unicode
script, property, or block name (see below for the additional rules
that apply to block names) with whitespace and dashes removed, and the
words "uppercase-first-lowercase-rest". C<Latin-1 Supplement> thus
becomes C<Latin1Supplement>.
You can also use negation in both C<\p{}> and C<\P{}> by introducing a caret
(^) between the first brace and the property name: C<\p{^Tamil}> is
Here are the basic Unicode General Category properties, followed by their
long form. You can use either; C<\p{Lu}> and C<\p{LowercaseLetter}>,
for instance, are identical.
(may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage)
(may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage)
Cs Surrogate (not usable)
Single-letter properties match all characters in any of the
two-letter sub-properties starting with the same letter.
C<L&> is a special case, which is an alias for C<Ll>, C<Lu>, and C<Lt>.
Because Perl hides the need for the user to understand the internal
representation of Unicode characters, there is no need to implement
the somewhat messy concept of surrogates. C<Cs> is therefore not
Because scripts differ in their directionality--Hebrew is
written right to left, for example--Unicode supplies these properties:
BidiLRE Left-to-Right Embedding
BidiLRO Left-to-Right Override
BidiAL Right-to-Left Arabic
BidiRLE Right-to-Left Embedding
BidiRLO Right-to-Left Override
BidiPDF Pop Directional Format
BidiES European Number Separator
BidiET European Number Terminator
BidiCS Common Number Separator
BidiB Paragraph Separator
For example, C<\p{BidiR}> matches characters that are normally
The script names which can be used by C<\p{...}> and C<\P{...}>,
such as in C<\p{Latin}> or C<\p{Cyrillic}>, are as follows:
Extended property classes can supplement the basic
properties, defined by the F<PropList> Unicode database:
OtherDefaultIgnorableCodePoint
and there are further derived properties:
Alphabetic Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + OtherAlphabetic
Lowercase Ll + OtherLowercase
Uppercase Lu + OtherUppercase
ID_Start Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + Nl
ID_Continue ID_Start + Mn + Mc + Nd + Pc
Assigned Any non-Cn character (i.e. synonym for \P{Cn})
Unassigned Synonym for \p{Cn}
Common Any character (or unassigned code point)
not explicitly assigned to a script
For backward compatibility (with Perl 5.6), all properties mentioned
so far may have C<Is> prepended to their name, so C<\P{IsLu}>, for
example, is equal to C<\P{Lu}>.
In addition to B<scripts>, Unicode also defines B<blocks> of
characters. The difference between scripts and blocks is that the
concept of scripts is closer to natural languages, while the concept
of blocks is more of an artificial grouping based on groups of 256
Unicode characters. For example, the C<Latin> script contains letters
from many blocks but does not contain all the characters from those
blocks. It does not, for example, contain digits, because digits are
shared across many scripts. Digits and similar groups, like
punctuation, are in a category called C<Common>.
For more about scripts, see the UTR #24:
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr24/
For more about blocks, see:
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Blocks.txt
Block names are given with the C<In> prefix. For example, the
Katakana block is referenced via C<\p{InKatakana}>. The C<In>
prefix may be omitted if there is no naming conflict with a script
or any other property, but it is recommended that C<In> always be used
for block tests to avoid confusion.
These block names are supported:
InAlphabeticPresentationForms
InArabicPresentationFormsA
InArabicPresentationFormsB
InByzantineMusicalSymbols
InCJKCompatibilityIdeographs
InCJKCompatibilityIdeographsSupplement
InCJKSymbolsAndPunctuation
InCJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionA
InCJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionB
InCombiningDiacriticalMarks
InCombiningDiacriticalMarksforSymbols
InEnclosedCJKLettersAndMonths
InHalfwidthAndFullwidthForms
InHangulCompatibilityJamo
InHighPrivateUseSurrogates
InIdeographicDescriptionCharacters
InKatakanaPhoneticExtensions
InLatinExtendedAdditional
InMathematicalAlphanumericSymbols
InMiscellaneousMathematicalSymbolsA
InMiscellaneousMathematicalSymbolsB
InOpticalCharacterRecognition
InSuperscriptsAndSubscripts
InSupplementalMathematicalOperators
InSupplementaryPrivateUseAreaA
InSupplementaryPrivateUseAreaB
InUnifiedCanadianAboriginalSyllabics
The special pattern C<\X> matches any extended Unicode
sequence--"a combining character sequence" in Standardese--where the
first character is a base character and subsequent characters are mark
characters that apply to the base character. C<\X> is equivalent to
The C<tr///> operator translates characters instead of bytes. Note
that the C<tr///CU> functionality has been removed. For similar
functionality see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...).
Case translation operators use the Unicode case translation tables
when character input is provided. Note that C<uc()>, or C<\U> in
interpolated strings, translates to uppercase, while C<ucfirst>,
or C<\u> in interpolated strings, translates to titlecase in languages
that make the distinction.
Most operators that deal with positions or lengths in a string will
automatically switch to using character positions, including
C<chop()>, C<substr()>, C<pos()>, C<index()>, C<rindex()>,
C<sprintf()>, C<write()>, and C<length()>. Operators that
specifically do not switch include C<vec()>, C<pack()>, and
C<unpack()>. Operators that really don't care include C<chomp()>,
operators that treats strings as a bucket of bits such as C<sort()>,
and operators dealing with filenames.
The C<pack()>/C<unpack()> letters C<c> and C<C> do I<not> change,
since they are often used for byte-oriented formats. Again, think
C<char> in the C language.
There is a new C<U> specifier that converts between Unicode characters
The C<chr()> and C<ord()> functions work on characters, similar to
C<pack("U")> and C<unpack("U")>, I<not> C<pack("C")> and
C<unpack("C")>. C<pack("C")> and C<unpack("C")> are methods for
emulating byte-oriented C<chr()> and C<ord()> on Unicode strings.
While these methods reveal the internal encoding of Unicode strings,
that is not something one normally needs to care about at all.
The bit string operators, C<& | ^ ~>, can operate on character data.
However, for backward compatibility, such as when using bit string
operations when characters are all less than 256 in ordinal value, one
should not use C<~> (the bit complement) with characters of both
values less than 256 and values greater than 256. Most importantly,
DeMorgan's laws (C<~($x|$y) eq ~$x&~$y> and C<~($x&$y) eq ~$x|~$y>)
will not hold. The reason for this mathematical I<faux pas> is that
the complement cannot return B<both> the 8-bit (byte-wide) bit
complement B<and> the full character-wide bit complement.
lc(), uc(), lcfirst(), and ucfirst() work for the following cases:
the case mapping is from a single Unicode character to another
single Unicode character, or
the case mapping is from a single Unicode character to more
than one Unicode character.
The following cases do not yet work:
the "final sigma" (Greek), and
anything to with locales (Lithuanian, Turkish, Azeri).
See the Unicode Technical Report #21, Case Mappings, for more details.
And finally, C<scalar reverse()> reverses by character rather than by byte.
=head2 User-Defined Character Properties
You can define your own character properties by defining subroutines
whose names begin with "In" or "Is". The subroutines must be
visible in the package that uses the properties. The user-defined
properties can be used in the regular expression C<\p> and C<\P>
The subroutines must return a specially-formatted string, with one
or more newline-separated lines. Each line must be one of the following:
Two hexadecimal numbers separated by horizontal whitespace (space or
tabular characters) denoting a range of Unicode code points to include.
Something to include, prefixed by "+": a built-in character
property (prefixed by "utf8::"), to represent all the characters in that
property; two hexadecimal code points for a range; or a single
Something to exclude, prefixed by "-": an existing character
property (prefixed by "utf8::"), for all the characters in that
property; two hexadecimal code points for a range; or a single
Something to negate, prefixed "!": an existing character
property (prefixed by "utf8::") for all the characters except the
characters in the property; two hexadecimal code points for a range;
or a single hexadecimal code point.
For example, to define a property that covers both the Japanese
syllabaries (hiragana and katakana), you can define
Imagine that the here-doc end marker is at the beginning of the line.
Now you can use C<\p{InKana}> and C<\P{InKana}>.
You could also have used the existing block property names:
Suppose you wanted to match only the allocated characters,
not the raw block ranges: in other words, you want to remove
The negation is useful for defining (surprise!) negated classes.
=head2 Character Encodings for Input and Output
=head2 Unicode Regular Expression Support Level
The following list of Unicode support for regular expressions describes
all the features currently supported. The references to "Level N"
and the section numbers refer to the Unicode Technical Report 18,
"Unicode Regular Expression Guidelines".
Level 1 - Basic Unicode Support
2.1 Hex Notation - done [1]
Named Notation - done [2]
2.2 Categories - done [3][4]
2.3 Subtraction - MISSING [5][6]
2.4 Simple Word Boundaries - done [7]
2.5 Simple Loose Matches - done [8]
2.6 End of Line - MISSING [9][10]
[ 4] now scripts (see UTR#24 Script Names) in addition to blocks
[ 6] can use regular expression look-ahead [a]
or user-defined character properties [b] to emulate subtraction
[ 7] include Letters in word characters
[ 8] note that Perl does Full case-folding in matching, not Simple:
for example U+1F88 is equivalent with U+1F000 U+03B9,
not with 1F80. This difference matters for certain Greek
capital letters with certain modifiers: the Full case-folding
decomposes the letter, while the Simple case-folding would map
it to a single character.
[ 9] see UTR#13 Unicode Newline Guidelines
[10] should do ^ and $ also on \x{85}, \x{2028} and \x{2029})
(should also affect <>, $., and script line numbers)
(the \x{85}, \x{2028} and \x{2029} do match \s)
[a] You can mimic class subtraction using lookahead.
For example, what TR18 might write as
in Perl can be written as:
(?!\p{Unassigned})\p{InGreekAndCoptic}
(?=\p{Assigned})\p{InGreekAndCoptic}
But in this particular example, you probably really want
which will match assigned characters known to be part of the Greek script.
[b] See L</"User-Defined Character Properties">.
Level 2 - Extended Unicode Support
3.2 Canonical Equivalents - MISSING [11][12]
3.3 Locale-Independent Graphemes - MISSING [13]
3.4 Locale-Independent Words - MISSING [14]
3.5 Locale-Independent Loose Matches - MISSING [15]
[11] see UTR#15 Unicode Normalization
[12] have Unicode::Normalize but not integrated to regexes
[13] have \X but at this level . should equal that
[14] need three classes, not just \w and \W
[15] see UTR#21 Case Mappings
Level 3 - Locale-Sensitive Support
4.1 Locale-Dependent Categories - MISSING
4.2 Locale-Dependent Graphemes - MISSING [16][17]
4.3 Locale-Dependent Words - MISSING
4.4 Locale-Dependent Loose Matches - MISSING
4.5 Locale-Dependent Ranges - MISSING
[16] see UTR#10 Unicode Collation Algorithms
[17] have Unicode::Collate but not integrated to regexes
Unicode characters are assigned to I<code points>, which are abstract
numbers. To use these numbers, various encodings are needed.
UTF-8 is a variable-length (1 to 6 bytes, current character allocations
require 4 bytes), byte-order independent encoding. For ASCII (and we
really do mean 7-bit ASCII, not another 8-bit encoding), UTF-8 is
The following table is from Unicode 3.2.
Code Points 1st Byte 2nd Byte 3rd Byte 4th Byte
U+0080..U+07FF C2..DF 80..BF
U+0800..U+0FFF E0 A0..BF 80..BF
U+1000..U+CFFF E1..EC 80..BF 80..BF
U+D000..U+D7FF ED 80..9F 80..BF
U+D800..U+DFFF ******* ill-formed *******
U+E000..U+FFFF EE..EF 80..BF 80..BF
U+10000..U+3FFFF F0 90..BF 80..BF 80..BF
U+40000..U+FFFFF F1..F3 80..BF 80..BF 80..BF
U+100000..U+10FFFF F4 80..8F 80..BF 80..BF
Note the C<A0..BF> in C<U+0800..U+0FFF>, the C<80..9F> in
C<U+D000...U+D7FF>, the C<90..B>F in C<U+10000..U+3FFFF>, and the
C<80...8F> in C<U+100000..U+10FFFF>. The "gaps" are caused by legal
UTF-8 avoiding non-shortest encodings: it is technically possible to
UTF-8-encode a single code point in different ways, but that is
explicitly forbidden, and the shortest possible encoding should always
be used. So that's what Perl does.
Another way to look at it is via bits:
Code Points 1st Byte 2nd Byte 3rd Byte 4th Byte
00000bbbbbaaaaaa 110bbbbb 10aaaaaa
ccccbbbbbbaaaaaa 1110cccc 10bbbbbb 10aaaaaa
00000dddccccccbbbbbbaaaaaa 11110ddd 10cccccc 10bbbbbb 10aaaaaa
As you can see, the continuation bytes all begin with C<10>, and the
leading bits of the start byte tell how many bytes the are in the
Like UTF-8 but EBCDIC-safe, in the way that UTF-8 is ASCII-safe.
UTF-16, UTF-16BE, UTF16-LE, Surrogates, and BOMs (Byte Order Marks)
The followings items are mostly for reference and general Unicode
knowledge, Perl doesn't use these constructs internally.
UTF-16 is a 2 or 4 byte encoding. The Unicode code points
C<U+0000..U+FFFF> are stored in a single 16-bit unit, and the code
points C<U+10000..U+10FFFF> in two 16-bit units. The latter case is
using I<surrogates>, the first 16-bit unit being the I<high
surrogate>, and the second being the I<low surrogate>.
Surrogates are code points set aside to encode the C<U+10000..U+10FFFF>
range of Unicode code points in pairs of 16-bit units. The I<high
surrogates> are the range C<U+D800..U+DBFF>, and the I<low surrogates>
are the range C<U+DC00..U+DFFF>. The surrogate encoding is
$hi = ($uni - 0x10000) / 0x400 + 0xD800;
$lo = ($uni - 0x10000) % 0x400 + 0xDC00;
$uni = 0x10000 + ($hi - 0xD800) * 0x400 + ($lo - 0xDC00);
If you try to generate surrogates (for example by using chr()), you
will get a warning if warnings are turned on, because those code
points are not valid for a Unicode character.
Because of the 16-bitness, UTF-16 is byte-order dependent. UTF-16
itself can be used for in-memory computations, but if storage or
transfer is required either UTF-16BE (big-endian) or UTF-16LE
(little-endian) encodings must be chosen.
This introduces another problem: what if you just know that your data
is UTF-16, but you don't know which endianness? Byte Order Marks, or
BOMs, are a solution to this. A special character has been reserved
in Unicode to function as a byte order marker: the character with the
code point C<U+FEFF> is the BOM.
The trick is that if you read a BOM, you will know the byte order,
since if it was written on a big-endian platform, you will read the
bytes C<0xFE 0xFF>, but if it was written on a little-endian platform,
you will read the bytes C<0xFF 0xFE>. (And if the originating platform
was writing in UTF-8, you will read the bytes C<0xEF 0xBB 0xBF>.)
The way this trick works is that the character with the code point
C<U+FFFE> is guaranteed not to be a valid Unicode character, so the
sequence of bytes C<0xFF 0xFE> is unambiguously "BOM, represented in
little-endian format" and cannot be C<U+FFFE>, represented in big-endian
UTF-32, UTF-32BE, UTF32-LE
The UTF-32 family is pretty much like the UTF-16 family, expect that
the units are 32-bit, and therefore the surrogate scheme is not
needed. The BOM signatures will be C<0x00 0x00 0xFE 0xFF> for BE and
C<0xFF 0xFE 0x00 0x00> for LE.
Encodings defined by the ISO 10646 standard. UCS-2 is a 16-bit
encoding. Unlike UTF-16, UCS-2 is not extensible beyond C<U+FFFF>,
because it does not use surrogates. UCS-4 is a 32-bit encoding,
functionally identical to UTF-32.
A seven-bit safe (non-eight-bit) encoding, which is useful if the
transport or storage is not eight-bit safe. Defined by RFC 2152.
=head2 Security Implications of Unicode
Unfortunately, the specification of UTF-8 leaves some room for
interpretation of how many bytes of encoded output one should generate
from one input Unicode character. Strictly speaking, the shortest
possible sequence of UTF-8 bytes should be generated,
because otherwise there is potential for an input buffer overflow at
the receiving end of a UTF-8 connection. Perl always generates the
shortest length UTF-8, and with warnings on Perl will warn about
non-shortest length UTF-8 along with other malformations, such as the
surrogates, which are not real Unicode code points.
Regular expressions behave slightly differently between byte data and
character (Unicode) data. For example, the "word character" character
class C<\w> will work differently depending on if data is eight-bit bytes
In the first case, the set of C<\w> characters is either small--the
default set of alphabetic characters, digits, and the "_"--or, if you
are using a locale (see L<perllocale>), the C<\w> might contain a few
more letters according to your language and country.
In the second case, the C<\w> set of characters is much, much larger.
Most importantly, even in the set of the first 256 characters, it will
probably match different characters: unlike most locales, which are
specific to a language and country pair, Unicode classifies all the
characters that are letters I<somewhere> as C<\w>. For example, your
locale might not think that LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH is a letter (unless
you happen to speak Icelandic), but Unicode does.
As discussed elsewhere, Perl has one foot (two hooves?) planted in
each of two worlds: the old world of bytes and the new world of
characters, upgrading from bytes to characters when necessary.
If your legacy code does not explicitly use Unicode, no automatic
switch-over to characters should happen. Characters shouldn't get
downgraded to bytes, either. It is possible to accidentally mix bytes
and characters, however (see L<perluniintro>), in which case C<\w> in
regular expressions might start behaving differently. Review your
code. Use warnings and the C<strict> pragma.
=head2 Unicode in Perl on EBCDIC
The way Unicode is handled on EBCDIC platforms is still
experimental. On such platforms, references to UTF-8 encoding in this
document and elsewhere should be read as meaning the UTF-EBCDIC
specified in Unicode Technical Report 16, unless ASCII vs. EBCDIC issues
are specifically discussed. There is no C<utfebcdic> pragma or
":utfebcdic" layer; rather, "utf8" and ":utf8" are reused to mean
the platform's "natural" 8-bit encoding of Unicode. See L<perlebcdic>
for more discussion of the issues.
Usually locale settings and Unicode do not affect each other, but
there are a couple of exceptions:
If your locale environment variables (LANGUAGE, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG)
contain the strings 'UTF-8' or 'UTF8' (case-insensitive matching),
the default encodings of your STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR, and of
B<any subsequent file open>, are considered to be UTF-8.
Perl tries really hard to work both with Unicode and the old
byte-oriented world. Most often this is nice, but sometimes Perl's
straddling of the proverbial fence causes problems.
=head2 Using Unicode in XS
If you want to handle Perl Unicode in XS extensions, you may find
the following C APIs useful. See L<perlapi> for details.
C<DO_UTF8(sv)> returns true if the C<UTF8> flag is on and the bytes
pragma is not in effect. C<SvUTF8(sv)> returns true is the C<UTF8>
flag is on; the bytes pragma is ignored. The C<UTF8> flag being on
does B<not> mean that there are any characters of code points greater
than 255 (or 127) in the scalar or that there are even any characters
in the scalar. What the C<UTF8> flag means is that the sequence of
octets in the representation of the scalar is the sequence of UTF-8
encoded code points of the characters of a string. The C<UTF8> flag
being off means that each octet in this representation encodes a
single character with code point 0..255 within the string. Perl's
Unicode model is not to use UTF-8 until it is absolutely necessary.
C<uvuni_to_utf8(buf, chr>) writes a Unicode character code point into
a buffer encoding the code point as UTF-8, and returns a pointer
pointing after the UTF-8 bytes.
C<utf8_to_uvuni(buf, lenp)> reads UTF-8 encoded bytes from a buffer and
returns the Unicode character code point and, optionally, the length of
C<utf8_length(start, end)> returns the length of the UTF-8 encoded buffer
in characters. C<sv_len_utf8(sv)> returns the length of the UTF-8 encoded
C<sv_utf8_upgrade(sv)> converts the string of the scalar to its UTF-8
encoded form. C<sv_utf8_downgrade(sv)> does the opposite, if
possible. C<sv_utf8_encode(sv)> is like sv_utf8_upgrade except that
it does not set the C<UTF8> flag. C<sv_utf8_decode()> does the
opposite of C<sv_utf8_encode()>. Note that none of these are to be
used as general-purpose encoding or decoding interfaces: C<use Encode>
for that. C<sv_utf8_upgrade()> is affected by the encoding pragma
but C<sv_utf8_downgrade()> is not (since the encoding pragma is
designed to be a one-way street).
C<is_utf8_char(s)> returns true if the pointer points to a valid UTF-8
C<is_utf8_string(buf, len)> returns true if C<len> bytes of the buffer
C<UTF8SKIP(buf)> will return the number of bytes in the UTF-8 encoded
character in the buffer. C<UNISKIP(chr)> will return the number of bytes
required to UTF-8-encode the Unicode character code point. C<UTF8SKIP()>
is useful for example for iterating over the characters of a UTF-8
encoded buffer; C<UNISKIP()> is useful, for example, in computing
the size required for a UTF-8 encoded buffer.
C<utf8_distance(a, b)> will tell the distance in characters between the
two pointers pointing to the same UTF-8 encoded buffer.
C<utf8_hop(s, off)> will return a pointer to an UTF-8 encoded buffer
that is C<off> (positive or negative) Unicode characters displaced
from the UTF-8 buffer C<s>. Be careful not to overstep the buffer:
C<utf8_hop()> will merrily run off the end or the beginning of the
C<pv_uni_display(dsv, spv, len, pvlim, flags)> and
C<sv_uni_display(dsv, ssv, pvlim, flags)> are useful for debugging the
output of Unicode strings and scalars. By default they are useful
only for debugging--they display B<all> characters as hexadecimal code
points--but with the flags C<UNI_DISPLAY_ISPRINT>,
C<UNI_DISPLAY_BACKSLASH>, and C<UNI_DISPLAY_QQ> you can make the
C<ibcmp_utf8(s1, pe1, u1, l1, u1, s2, pe2, l2, u2)> can be used to
compare two strings case-insensitively in Unicode. For case-sensitive
comparisons you can just use C<memEQ()> and C<memNE()> as usual.
For more information, see L<perlapi>, and F<utf8.c> and F<utf8.h>
in the Perl source code distribution.
=head2 Interaction with Locales
Use of locales with Unicode data may lead to odd results. Currently,
Perl attempts to attach 8-bit locale info to characters in the range
0..255, but this technique is demonstrably incorrect for locales that
use characters above that range when mapped into Unicode. Perl's
Unicode support will also tend to run slower. Use of locales with
=head2 Interaction with Extensions
When Perl exchanges data with an extension, the extension should be
able to understand the UTF-8 flag and act accordingly. If the
extension doesn't know about the flag, it's likely that the extension
will return incorrectly-flagged data.
So if you're working with Unicode data, consult the documentation of
every module you're using if there are any issues with Unicode data
exchange. If the documentation does not talk about Unicode at all,
suspect the worst and probably look at the source to learn how the
module is implemented. Modules written completely in Perl shouldn't
cause problems. Modules that directly or indirectly access code written
in other programming languages are at risk.
For affected functions, the simple strategy to avoid data corruption is
to always make the encoding of the exchanged data explicit. Choose an
encoding that you know the extension can handle. Convert arguments passed
to the extensions to that encoding and convert results back from that
encoding. Write wrapper functions that do the conversions for you, so
you can later change the functions when the extension catches up.
To provide an example, let's say the popular Foo::Bar::escape_html
function doesn't deal with Unicode data yet. The wrapper function
would convert the argument to raw UTF-8 and convert the result back to
Perl's internal representation like so:
return unless defined $what;
Encode::decode_utf8(Foo::Bar::escape_html(Encode::encode_utf8($what)));
Sometimes, when the extension does not convert data but just stores
and retrieves them, you will be in a position to use the otherwise
dangerous Encode::_utf8_on() function. Let's say the popular
C<Foo::Bar> extension, written in C, provides a C<param> method that
lets you store and retrieve data according to these prototypes:
$self->param($name, $value); # set a scalar
$value = $self->param($name); # retrieve a scalar
If it does not yet provide support for any encoding, one could write a
derived class with such a C<param> method:
my($self,$name,$value) = @_;
utf8::upgrade($name); # make sure it is UTF-8 encoded
utf8::upgrade($value); # make sure it is UTF-8 encoded
return $self->SUPER::param($name,$value);
my $ret = $self->SUPER::param($name);
Encode::_utf8_on($ret); # we know, it is UTF-8 encoded
Some extensions provide filters on data entry/exit points, such as
DB_File::filter_store_key and family. Look out for such filters in
the documentation of your extensions, they can make the transition to
Unicode data much easier.
Some functions are slower when working on UTF-8 encoded strings than
on byte encoded strings. All functions that need to hop over
characters such as length(), substr() or index() can work B<much>
faster when the underlying data are byte-encoded. Witness the
our $u = our $b = "x" x $l;
substr($u,0,1) = "\x{100}";
LENGTH_B => q{ length($b) },
LENGTH_U => q{ length($u) },
SUBSTR_B => q{ substr($b, $l/4, $l/2) },
SUBSTR_U => q{ substr($u, $l/4, $l/2) },
Benchmark: running LENGTH_B, LENGTH_U, SUBSTR_B, SUBSTR_U for at least 2 CPU seconds...
LENGTH_B: 2 wallclock secs ( 2.36 usr + 0.00 sys = 2.36 CPU) @ 5649983.05/s (n=13333960)
LENGTH_U: 2 wallclock secs ( 2.11 usr + 0.00 sys = 2.11 CPU) @ 12155.45/s (n=25648)
SUBSTR_B: 3 wallclock secs ( 2.16 usr + 0.00 sys = 2.16 CPU) @ 374480.09/s (n=808877)
SUBSTR_U: 2 wallclock secs ( 2.11 usr + 0.00 sys = 2.11 CPU) @ 6791.00/s (n=14329)
The numbers show an incredible slowness on long UTF-8 strings. You
should carefully avoid using these functions in tight loops. If you
want to iterate over characters, the superior coding technique would
split the characters into an array instead of using substr, as the following
our $u = our $b = "x" x $l;
substr($u,0,1) = "\x{100}";
SPLIT_B => q{ for my $c (split //, $b){} },
SPLIT_U => q{ for my $c (split //, $u){} },
SUBSTR_B => q{ for my $i (0..length($b)-1){my $c = substr($b,$i,1);} },
SUBSTR_U => q{ for my $i (0..length($u)-1){my $c = substr($u,$i,1);} },
Benchmark: running SPLIT_B, SPLIT_U, SUBSTR_B, SUBSTR_U for at least 5 CPU seconds...
SPLIT_B: 6 wallclock secs ( 5.29 usr + 0.00 sys = 5.29 CPU) @ 56.14/s (n=297)
SPLIT_U: 5 wallclock secs ( 5.17 usr + 0.01 sys = 5.18 CPU) @ 55.21/s (n=286)
SUBSTR_B: 5 wallclock secs ( 5.34 usr + 0.00 sys = 5.34 CPU) @ 123.22/s (n=658)
SUBSTR_U: 7 wallclock secs ( 6.20 usr + 0.00 sys = 6.20 CPU) @ 0.81/s (n=5)
Even though the algorithm based on C<substr()> is faster than
C<split()> for byte-encoded data, it pales in comparison to the speed
of C<split()> when used with UTF-8 data.
L<perluniintro>, L<encoding>, L<Encode>, L<open>, L<utf8>, L<bytes>,
L<perlretut>, L<perlvar/"${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS}">
projects / OpenSPARC-T2-DV / blob